


Deleted Scene 1: Mike's Nightmare

by paladin_cleric_mage



Series: I Want to Break Free [3]
Category: Stranger Things (TV 2016)
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-05-08
Updated: 2020-05-08
Packaged: 2021-03-03 02:53:17
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence, Major Character Death
Chapters: 1
Words: 676
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/24077794
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/paladin_cleric_mage/pseuds/paladin_cleric_mage
Summary: Corresponds to Chapter 43: Will
Series: I Want to Break Free [3]
Series URL: https://archiveofourown.org/series/1419694
Kudos: 7





	Deleted Scene 1: Mike's Nightmare

In the dream he’s standing on grass. Ahead of him: canopied train tracks tapering into a pin in the distance, green and more green, the summer shush of wind. To the left is an open pasture gate, all rusted steel and broken chains. There were horses here once, before the property was divided. Now if you enter that ghost of a pasture you’ll find a thin dirt path, nearly crowded out by tall grass, leading up a bunny slope, and if you follow the path to the white pipe you’ll see a small break in a sprawl of grass-- a rectangular field stationed between a mass of forest on either side. That break leads to the red schoolhouse. Long abandoned now, split in half yet half still stands. There’s a thrill to gain, teetering up the splintered wooden stairs and standing on the ledge of the second floor in an old classroom, and if you look close enough you’ll see notches in the wall where kids measured their heights once. How does a structure so damaged remain erect?

Birds flutter overhead, up the hill where he wants to go. High overhead the sun beams, warms the skin of his clean limbs. He adjusts his backpack and checks his watch. What’s taking Will so long? When he looks up again, there, to his right across the silent tracks, sits a low wooden fence and behind it a huge white house. Stark black shutters, impeccable landscaping besides. Bees busy themselves around purple flower bushes; a white wicker arbor and a tiny stone patio relax in the middle of the yard, where a tea set from his childhood sits untouched. A scent of romance-- beauty, impossibility. When Will gets here Mike is going to hold his hand.

He blinks and is inside the house, hiding in a family room full of framed photographs and artwork. _Shit!_ If he doesn’t get out of here soon he’ll miss Will. There’s movement in the next room. Shadows. Where is the front door? Or the back? How can he escape without being seen by them? What should he say if he gets caught?

His ears prick back at the sound of his sister’s laughter. What’s she doing here? She isn’t supposed to be here. A screen door squeaks open and slams shut. Through the window across the room Mike sees her walking in a slim summer dress with her hair tied up. Suddenly he understands. If she is welcome here, he is too. _This_ is where he’s meeting Will. Quickly he steals through the house and out the back door, stalling on the stone steps. Tea time, wind chimes and a joke missed. Will is sitting there, under the arbor at a wrought iron table. Nancy in her sunhat wears a calculatedly kind smile, but beneath her skin moves something, and Mike remembers why she’s not supposed to be here. There is no Nancy-- only a monster wearing her skin, standing over Will, pouring some kind of poison into his cup. Why can’t he sense it? Doesn’t he know? Mike steps down into the grass and a ropey tendril of meat curls out of her laughing jaw and thrusts itself down Will’s throat like a missile. There’s a stabbing pain in Mike’s gut and he looks down, expecting a knife, blood, only it’s nothing-- train tracks. He looks back up and sees that Will has been pulled inside out like worn jeans, or a sweet potato boiled and opened, wrinkled skin pulled apart so chunky innards stripped and mushy fall all over the plate. Pain in Mike’s stomach again, he feels Will’s hurt, and Nancy is a demogorgon spindly squatting over her prey, claws scraping flesh and taste testing different parts. Light and dark meat. Turkey at holiday time, proof of savagery and unavoidable. Vegetarian. Mike lies down lengthwise, head balanced on the metal track.

“You said you saw him on Mirkwood?” Chief Hopper says, “There’s no road called Mirkwood. I can’t call out a search party for a kid that doesn’t exist.”

  
  



End file.
